Effective Online Community Managers And Their Habits.

Ever since Social Media has started to make its ground in the middle of all brand/marketing campaigns, organizations and senior managements have warmed up to the idea of actually looking towards social media and other online platforms as an important part of their brands marketing entourage. This has in return given rise to the concept of hiring “Online Community Managers”, Social Media Specialists, Online content specialists, and the list goes on.

Certain important traits which I have found to be innate in all Online Community Managers or Social Media Specialists, or should be naturally present in Community Managers are:

• They love to have conversations,time and again I have mentioned that Social Media is all about having conversations,developing conversations, starting and carrying them on. A Social Media Specialist should be able to  talk to people,start conversations not only this he should be have the quality of loving talking to people. If he is all this then your Social Media/Network page will flourish, if not…its time to think on alternatives.
• is good with analysing emotions, trust me when i say empathy can be one of your most important weapons on the social media,it allows you to understand the emotional state one is in, and create a favourable path for you to communicate your opinion and take control of the conversation accordingly. A good online Community Manager knows how to handle frustrated customers because he is able to assess their frame of minds and thinking at that very instant, therefore he knows how to handle them/criticism appropriately.
• Staying informed, a good social media manager makes it a point to stay informed about trends,major events, trends in conversations to judge where to pick up a good angle from. In other words, he/she should be hooked to the social network.
• Reflecting on the culture of your customers.Understanding the customer and what are his inclinations is a very important trait of any Online Community and Social Media Managers. Analyse conversations which go on around your page. What are your page fans talking about? what topics do they normally bring up when interacting with other fans on the page? you might want to have someone in your social media team who,if not an expert,possesses knowledge on the topics being talked about so that he can add in to the conversation, and ultimately steer it in whichever way he wants to.
• Needs to have a sense of humour,lots of it, No one likes dry messaging on Fan pages, the whole concept of a Facebook Fanpage is interacting with the fans, you need to interact with the fans using techniques which develop conversations and a flow of comments,opinions and preferably,ideas. Having a sense of humour helps in breaking the ice,getting information which the brand might be able to use for future, and pretty much an honest opinion from the users.
• Word-play: perhaps one of the most important traits in an effective Community Manager is that he knows how to craft conversations, content and statements. Always remember, in order to get “inside” information out of the customer/user, one needs to know how to angle a conversation in such a way that the information which he/she requires falls right in his/her lap. in other words an effective community manager will always be a good Wordsmith.

Content Marketing Success.

I read a very interesting post on content marketing the other day and it talked about how to position your content marketing strategy to really hit it where it counts with consumers. just to summarize it lets look at some of the things I learned from it.

Design means a lot: your content is far more interesting to read and a lot more receptive for the reader if it has visual appeal to it, remember the reader/audience might not be big on reading lengthy articles, while if these articles are complimented with visual aids, (infographs,pictures,GIFs) it hold the audience concentration in one place and allows you to get your point across more efficiently.

Use all aids: like i mentioned above about how to give a thought into putting some design in your content, adding visual aids pretty much goes hand-in-hand with this, use videos ,animations, call-outs to make your message more interesting to the audience.

Don’t force feed: the basic rule of marketing, which is to make profits and sales is always there somewhere in the head of a marketer,but when it comes to content marketing this changes a little.With content marketing you need to follow a more subtle and in-direct approach to selling your brand, content marketing should aim at educating,informing and entertaining the audience so that they themselves are enticed enough to inquire about the product or service and then allow themselves to experiment by actually using it. Going in with a “hard-selling” strategy will not allow you to approach audience/customers in a unique manner and you will end up as just another orthodox marketer trying to force feed your brand into the customers mouth.

Don’t keep them waiting: Most marketers do not realize when writing content that on the digital front, information needs to be fast and complete, and there has to be as much IMPORTANT information as you can put in when writing a content piece. What you need to do is to maintain the audience attention and make them go through as much information as they can WHEN they are in their “content reading mode”, provide links to support your article,give them hyper-linked content so that they can look into something right there and then. Don’t lead them on and don’t make them wait give them all important information all at once.

Sharing is caring..literally: Your content should be easy to share and go around, “liquid” content should not only be in terms of smoothly flowing and connecting but also in the form of easy sharing.

This is it for now 😀

Make A Successful Social Media Campaign…You Shall!

Social Media plays a very important role of influencing and engaging audiences like no other medium, hence the probability of deriving a successful campaign through this medium is relatively solid then old age marketing in today’s world.

so how can you derive more traffic, sales conversions and more audience through a successful social media campaign:

• Each person should have a specific role on the social media; you need to divide the responsibilities and tasks of every member in your team, who will look after online business development?who will derive content? who will maintain regular updates? etc. it beats 6 people talking to the same person on the fan page,overlapping each others jobs, everyone in your team needs to be effective and consistent what they are looking after.
• You need to know where your target market spends most of their online time; we see new social networks popping up by the dozen everyday, what you need to realize is that it is impossible..rather stupid if you try to be on all these networks, it will only end up in causing more chaos then any sort of systematic process in your life. The more “intelligent” solution to this is by doing an applied research on all popular networks, going through blog directories and using online measuring tools to see which networks are your audience mostly interacting on, and them jump in, then its your ball game on which tactics to use for enticing the audience.
• and the most important aspect as always, engagement, sensible engagement that is, you need to know what to write,how to interact and just what will the audience respond to, your updates,statuses and any message broadcast should be unique and interesting enough to create a conversation,retain it and ultimately convert it 🙂

More on this later :)….

Boosting Your Business Through the Social Media

How was the world functioning,communication thriving and people interacting with each other before Facebook and the Social Media influx, i think things were pretty much progressing the way they should, companies and clients were communicating in the usual manner and businesses were attracting customers using the normal sales/brand promotion cycles.

What social media really did for us was to create a more efficient manner of communicating brand offerings and content sharing with people not only close to us but also people out of our physical reach, it really didn’t create a new “field” or “branch” in marketing 101 it actually complemented the already existing marketing techniques used for product and brand.

So by using social media and by understanding how  people use social media you can actually derive the most core marketing objectives out of it.

• Marketing aims to create awareness, it focuses at reaching as many people and relevant audiences as possible, how social media helps here; although you may be sending out the message to a handful of people, those handful further have their own friends, their friends have yet another set of friends,so on an so forth, social media helps in dissemination of the message to a broader scope an reach of focused audiences. All content sharing may not convert into promised purchases but if you are sharing content and your friends are further sharing it,it may end up being seen by more people at the days end, interesting,unique,appealing content has a virality and awareness level of its own.
• Sales, the biggest objective behind every marketer,when using the social media to do this create exclusive offers which might catch the eye of influence makers and in-turn allow them to generate it further among their friends, so instead of going to the masses,when it comes to using social media with the objective of generating sales try being as exclusive as possible.
• a very effective way of using social media is for creating loyalty of your brand among your followers,potential market, you need to use social media to promote your page and presence among your customers whenever you have access to it, create engaging content, visual and textual, create apps and mini competitions which would keep all audiences captivated and maintain interest in what the brand is offering.Get customers to engage with your content, it is very important, it helps in creating a deeper relationship with your customer an generate loyalty with them.

 

Marketing strategies relate very much to social media marketing strategies but you should not try to implement on the online front as they are, cater to offerings exclusively, one size DOES NOT fit all here. Brands in the New Age should be regular social media users, and should be helpful to customers in driving content based conversations by providing them the solutions which they are looking for.

How is Facebook Changing.

A while ago Facebook went through a whole new change aesthetically when it introduced its timeline design and a huge space on top of the profile to make ‘cover photos’.

When Facebook had mentioned before that it was going to create greater adaptability for brands on their pages, they really meant it. After changing the way it looks Facebook gave all brands notifications to change their pages according to the new design by  March 31st, a move which brands should consider making at the earliest, why? because the new design provides much more exposure and visual appeal to everything than the previous design did, and brands could really put their Social Media promotion in the next gear if they took care of their old designs asap.

So how has Facebook changed? lets see.

• Prominent Design; the new design change in Facebook allows for a bigger area for displaying images, easier for brands to highlight their product. the timeline provides a good means to look at how the brand story or a particular discussion is progressing over time.
• Personal Messaging; the private messaging option with the new design has allowed brands to communicate with the audience or the page fans on a more personal level, you can make your conversations more personalized now.
• Landing Page; The new design dictates that there will be one single landing page for all the fans, you will no longer be able to create a custom tab as put if up as a landing page for your Facebook Brand page.
• Promo Tabs; in the previous design page owners were allowed to create promo/custom tabs whenever and however they pleased and they would be visible on the left side of the page, the new Facebook design dictates only Four promo tabs to be “featured” or view-able on the main page, out of those 4 tabs the Photos tab is permanently attached and cannot be moved or removed from the page, the rest of the 3 tabs are movable and customize-able, so choose wisely.
• Content Featuring; The new Facebook design allows you to “pin” content which you want to feature on the top of the timeline, there is a yellow “marker” available to page owners so you can take promotions,call to actions, images and blog posts to the top of the page to be exposed more to visitors.

Although the changes which Facebook has brought to itself seem to be beneficial to brands especially in terms of promoting themselves and specific content which they would want their visitors to read, there could however be certain downfalls to it too, what do you think?

Are you Social Media Marketing..or Stalking Audiences?

Whenever we see a new commercial on television, or listen to a product ad on the radio for the first time and like it, we usually want to watch it again soon to enjoy it once more, this happens a couple of times until we grow used to it and then want to distance ourselves from it because we have seen it or heard it way too many times, however if that particular ad still keeps up with increasing appearances on our television, pretty soon it becomes really annoying and at times irritating to your senses, so much so that you just cant stand it and you change any and every channel it is being aired from.

My point here is that the Social Media follows a similar if not the same cycle as orthodox marketing does.

YES social media is all about interaction and connecting with people BUT, in a SANE MANNER. Brand communications need to revolve around creating a positive impression in the mind of all potential and current customers/audiences and not to drive them insane with unnecessary tagging, self promotion and projecting a “Saint” image every 2 minutes. The line between promotion of your brand and cyber stalking your potential market is very very thin and should be understood before your brand/you end up getting on the last nerves of people and face social media boycott for your brand.

With the growing trends in Social Media businesses or “Digiprenuers” as i like to call them especially in growing countries like Pakistan it is imperative for these Digiprenuers to understand how to cater to their online audience, Yes they only have one way of communicating with all potential customers, BUT that does not mean they should be force feeding every bit of their brand to any and every user that stumbles across the Social Network. You need to understand the difference between promotion and stalking, feeding and smothering.

According to Insight Strategy Group in a research which they conducted on how people react to Brands on the Social Media, 58% thought it to be “invasive” when brands use social networking to promote because the Social Network is for people coming in to socialize and not to hear brand pitches, and self promotion of products which 80% of the time turn out to be mediocre. Then there is the problem which they highlighted is face by all new Digiprenuers, if not at,most of them (the anxious ones especially) , They are all trigger happy status/update bombardiers… a big no no like NO. Always remember that if a potential customer finds something of value or something that he likes on your Brands Social Media page he will find you himself, he will become a regular part of the feed HIMSELF, if he doesnt then you try to improve your content and your offering and NOT bombard him with Self promotional updates.

Jeremy Gutsche the best known Trend Hunter in the world mentions that no matter how average your product is YOUR STORY in promoting it should be awesome… but that by no way means that you unload a truck load of updates and picture tags on your online customers every 1 min. Promote NOT bombard and so NOT Stalk.

in summary:

• Maintain a steady stream of updates ( once or Twice a day) or if its something important to promote 4-5 times a day extended over planned regular intervals. NOT after every 1 minute,and not A MILLION UPDATES in 1 min.
• Do not DO NOT SELF PROMOTE yourself. Promotion of the Brand is Necessary but a brand SELF PROMOTING ITSELF obsessively is not cool. if it is that good people will notice it LET THEM be the JUDGE.
• Maintain a distinction between what you update/status through your brand and what you update as an individual, remember THE BRAND cannot have a be-grudging tone on its page, your brand will face criticism,hate comments,and biased remarks, DO NOT take them personally and start fighting with customers on the page, turn it into a positive and resolve it, DONT THREATEN them with claims and brute arrogance.
• I cannot stress on it enough DO NOT BLOW YOUR OWN HORN continuously, people WILL get irritated and they will start hating the brand and you and they will start posting trash around.

This is for all the new Digiprenuers on the Social Media. Sell your cupcakes, take your t-shirts, promote your photographs, but do not tick off the customer you are promoting to,  do not make them hit that invisible “hate” button instead of the “Like” one.

 

Handle your Negative Online Customer Comments Positively.

Some call it a blessing,some are irritated by it,others just downright don’t want it in their lives, this is how social media has impacted people ever since it grew in popularity and use.

However, brands and products have reaped more than a few benefits in terms of promotion and marketing on the online/digital frontier,taking their brand names to new heights. Along with this it has also given customers/target audiences a greater sense of attachment with the brand, through social media the customer now can simply say if he likes or doesn’t like a product right on the brands Facebook/Twitter/Google+ page . He can vent out his complaints,he can praise the brand, and he can provide opinions on what he like and what he doesn’t with regards to the brand.

With this comes the bad part,if interactions,complaints and opinions are left unattended on the social media, it starts planting a seed of doubt in the mind of the audience that the brand doesn’t pay much head to whatever the target market is saying. So how do  you deal with maintaining a positive relationship with your audiences online, and manage your interactions with them while mitigating their complains. Try this:

• Listen to what your audiences are saying to you and about you- if a customer is dissatisfied, try and talk to him,answer his query. Handle with care 🙂
• THINK before you SPEAK- never be in your “angry” mode when replying to customers/ or your online fans, because in that intense moment you could end up saying things which might not have good repercussions later on.Take your time in thinking just what to say to your online customer,how to craft an answer so that you/your brand remain in the “good books” while the customer is also left satisfied.
• Know the details- if you are running a brand, with a team of staff under you, you need to know what they are up to or how they are dealing with their side of customer interaction, once you know whats going on behind then you will be able to devise your answers in a better way.
• See how others are doing it – its always a good idea to look around other brand pages and learn to see how they are handling their customer interactions, this helps you in realizing the tone of interaction they are using, how customers are responding on their page to their updates and answers.
• Policies do work – social media interaction never follows a set pattern it could peak up negatives responses as well as positive ones, so having a set “rules of engagement” in terms of online responses helps if not completely erasing the negativity. If you do not define rules and policies for online engagement then you really don’t know where your online interaction is headed, and then it runs all over the place hence in the end deeming to be ineffective.

As social media progresses at such an exponential pace, online business managers or social media support teams are advised to be best prepared and skilled with handling such queries, complains, and concerns as soon as possible.

Always remember if a customer experience with your brand goes to the dung can, the online world with its tremendous capability to spread news and experiences in a viral shape can completely ruin your brand.